I still leave family spaces more edited than I entered them

Dear Delyara, That’s what I feel most after some visits. Not necessarily hurt. Edited. As if I had to keep adjusting myself around old maps — softer truth, safer phrasing, less direct feeling, more careful pacing. By the time it’s over, I can feel how much of my energy went not into the content of the interaction, but into the management of my own presence inside it. That is tiring in a way that sounds too subtle to justify itself. It still tires me deeply.